


The Real You

by Koren M (CyberMathWitch)



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mild Language, canon-typical references to drug and alcohol abuse, canon-typical references to suicide and suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:30:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyberMathWitch/pseuds/Koren%20M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fee was the kind of person she'd always been envious of.  He was present in his body and in his life; he was comfortable with himself in a way that Allison wasn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Real You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cat_77](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/gifts).



This was _happening_.

Every so often, when the almost mechanical certainty of her life "before" tried to steam roll across her mind, Alison would remind herself that the clones and conspiracies and death and confusion was _real_. More real than the habits and routines that had been carefully (and deeply) carved across her psyche, hand and foot holds for her to grip so she could hold on to the never ending wall of perfection she felt like she had to climb.

How funny to realize that in a way, those habits and routines been the problem all along.

It was Felix's fault, really. Felix. Fee. Her... well, no, not quite her brother, unless you could commute people the way you could numbers (like the math properties Gemma was working on in school). Fee to Sarah and Sarah to her. Except that Sarah didn't feel like a sister, not really, not like Beth almost, almost had.

_She_ wished _he was really her brother. She'd always kind of wanted one._

Fee was the kind of person she'd always been envious of. Fee was present in his body and in his life; he was comfortable with himself in a way that Allison hadn't been since the brief moments she'd been on the stage in college. When she'd been exhausted, covered in greasepaint and sweaty clothes. squinting and head aching because the lights were too hot, too bright, for too long, _that's_ when she'd always felt like herself. Like she was home. She was comfortable being other people for awhile, felt like she fit into her own skin better when she was trying to make herself larger and be someone else. The rest of the time, she was struggling, grasping, holding on to what other people said she should be like if she didn't she would die, as if _that_ were the true role-play and she just didn't have a director to yell "cut!" 

And the strangest thing? The most remarkable, oddest, _strangest_ thing about all this, was that somehow, he saw through all of that, all of her carefully constructed perfect persona and not only saw but _accepted_ the actual Allison that _she_ hadn't even known was underneath. The self that she hadn't had the courage to see was there in all her messy, obsessive, addicted, histrionic glory.

How weird was _that_?

Alone in the car on the way to his apartment, mind reeling and worried about Kira's accident (and worrying about why a little girl she'd only met once felt more like her child than her own children. _Children_ who seemed to be slipping away from her, like they were the children of that other woman, that woman that wasn't really her, that other life that she'd only been pretending to have for so long) - she had to focus on just breathing.

She wanted pills, she wanted wine, she wanted the sleep and release she knew would follow them for a little while.

Instead, she took one look around his apartment when she arrived and started to clean.

Thoroughly.

Obsessively.

This was a part that was not quite so removed from her actual self she was only beginning to uncover. Frantic motion, frantic energy, the impulses she'd once channeled into the desperate rush to and fro in her over committed schedule and over-planned life. It was an inability to stop, a fear of slowing down, of seeing that one-more-thing she could do. She was running the vacuum for the third (fifth?) time and seriously contemplating pulling all the clothes back out of the drawers and finding a laundromat even though she hated going to them when Felix walked in the door.

He didn't like it, she could tell he didn't like it but she didn't care. She'd had to do something for him. This was what she could do. (She'd had to do something with herself, with all that energy, and this was what she could do.)

He flopped on the couch and she moved over to the end table to dust it yet again. Already, she could feel like that manic drive was winding down, draining out of her.

Her heart lit up when he said she could stay. 

There was just one other thing...

"Felix?" 

"Felix, I'm a pariah. I can't go back there alone. I need you to be my wingman." She was afraid of going back home. She was afraid of facing Donnie, of running into Aynsley again, sure, but more than that she was afraid if she walked back in there she would lose this tenuous grip on herself. But with Felix along, maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't forget.

"Are you bloody serious?"

"Please?"

He sighed, and she held her breath while she tightened her grip on his wrist.

"I need to change. Fetch me something gay."

*****

She'd expected to have the house to herself. She'd thought the only thing she would have to face was the shape and trappings of her life once lived, and then they. Were. All. There. Even Donnie's _mother_. She'd sat down because she was supposed to. They'd expected her to. And she'd felt the pressure and the expectations and the weight of what she used to call "normal" crashing back down on her, along with the responsibility for all the awful things she'd done that she had no way to explain. 

_(And part of her wondered if this was some kind of bizarre experiment set up by whoever pulled Aynsley's strings to see what it would take to make her break. Maybe that's what Paul had systematically done to Beth, pushed and nudged until she'd offed herself, and now it was her turn.)_

*****

Standing in front of her bathroom mirror, in her perfect, spotless, soulless bathroom, it felt like Felix was piecing her back together into the true image of herself. Each swipe of the brush was an armor, each layer of color was a shield. As he did, he didn't tell her to straighten up and remember she was a wife, a mother, or a "friend". He told her to pretend. To play a roll, to play their game, to act a part on stage in full knowledge that she was _acting_.

In control. 

As _herself_.

Finally.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide! We actually matched on all three _other_ fandoms listed - this was the only one I hadn't ever seen. But I've been hearing so much about it, and it looked so intriguing that I couldn't help myself, so here we are! :D Thank you for giving me the opportunity to get into it! I hope I've done Alison and Felix a little bit of justice here.
> 
> I hope you're having a happy holiday season!


End file.
